Taunton City Council says yes to retail pot zoning ordinance

Wednesday

Oct 3, 2018 at 8:07 PMOct 4, 2018 at 4:10 PM

TAUNTON – After months of discussion, the City Council this week decided on where you’ll be able to buy recreational marijuana.

The council voted 7-1 to adopt an ordinance requiring that all marijuana retailers be confined to areas zoned either as Highway Business District or Industrial, of which there are at least half a dozen in the city.

Formal adoption of any ordinance requires three readings, which means that the new ordinance won’t officially become law until the council votes twice more in the coming weeks.

The action automatically results in the cessation of a moratorium adopted last year by the council prohibiting the opening of any recreational-pot retail store in the city until the end of 2018.

Planning and Conservation Department director Kevin Scanlon told the council he’d been informed by City Solicitor Jason D. Buffington that once the ordinance is adopted the moratorium will become “null and void.”

The moratorium was intended to give the council time to see how state laws governing the regulation and use of recreational pot shook out.

Those guidelines were issued last June.

The new zoning ordinance does not include a recommendation unanimously approved in September by the city’s Planning Board — which would have imposed a thousand-foot buffer, or distance, between a marijuana retailer and a residence.

The ordinance approved Tuesday night states there must be a distance of at least 500 feet between each marijuana retailer.

Phil Duarte, committee chairman of the Taunton Pathways initiative to increase bicycle paths in the city, spoke in opposition of the Planning Board’s recommendation for the larger buffer.

Duarte said the larger buffer would “undermine state law” by making it virtually impossible to site more than one retailer within any given zone.

He also said it makes sense to permit pot shops to operate in highway business zones — which often includes a mix of businesses and residential homes — because, as noted last April by Police Chief Edward Walsh, they are more frequently patrolled as compared to industrial zones.

Also speaking in support of the 500-foot buffer was local businessman Dennis Borges, owner of Borges Auto Center on Dean Street/Route 44.

Borges told the council he would welcome a recreational marijuana retailer as a tenant in a vacant building he owns at 9 Cape Road, located not far from and on the same side of Route 44 as his used car lot.

The council said it will at a later date discuss establishing an application fee, which for now doesn’t exist, for potential retailers.

The question of zoning has gone through permutations in municipal chambers within the past year.

Scanlon last April, for example, recommended that the council consider an ordinance restricting retail sales of recreational marijuana be restricted to Mozzone Boulevard and Liberty and Union Industrial Park, both of which are zoned for industrial and adult-entertainment use.

Mozzone Boulevard currently is where a medical marijuana cultivation-and-sales facility is located.

During April’s council meeting, Chief Walsh described recreational cannabis as “the wave of the future” and said that “we should embrace it, regulate it and live with it.”

He also said that regulated retail shops would ensure that marijuana being sold is not being mixed with the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, which can occur when pot is sold on the black market.

Councilor Carr, who butted heads with Walsh during that meeting, Tuesday night reiterated her deep disagreement with the chief.

“I think the chief should be ashamed of himself,” for taking such a stance, Carr said after the meeting had adjourned.